Impact response and residual performance of GRP pultruded shapes under static and fatigue loading

This article reports detailed results on the impact damage and residual mechanical behaviour of some pultruded glass-fibre/polyester structures. The impact aspects studied include damage analysis and the impact behaviour of these shapes. The influences of test parameters such as impact velocity, impactor mass and impactor size were emphasised as well as the type of damage observed. Four-point flexural tests were performed on box beams and U sections in order to determine the post-impact residual performance of these beams under static and fatigue loading. Several types of failure mode were observed on damaged and undamaged specimens. The residual performances are strongly correlated with the type of impact testing configuration. Moreover, these residual performances seemed also to be influenced by the profile geometry (in fatigue bending tests) and especially by the opened/closed characteristic of the structures (opened for U sections and closed for the box beams).